


The Emotional Arc

by abrae



Series: Compulsive Meta [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 17:06:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrae/pseuds/abrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Musing on the emotional trajectory of Sherlock and John throughout Sherlock (emphasis on Sherlock, some attention to John) from a more personal perspective</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Emotional Arc

This is my last word on this. Maybe. Probably. Who knows. I will say that, true to form, I give all of this a positive - or, at least, not angry - spin. I see a coherent emotional trajectory for both Sherlock and John; I acknowledge completely and fully that  _you may not_ , and that is  _fine_. I’m posting this because it may be useful reading to someone else, and I’d already worked it up for [frytha](http://tmblr.co/mIwBdoaALsZgJnb2AsVJLhw) in a couple of emails, so it was already there. But I’m not planning to debate or otherwise explain any of it further - it’s just what I see, take it or leave it. ‘Cause, I don’t know about you all, but I’m exhausted.

So. This is going to be one long post.

As some of you know, I’m coming at the characters from a place of intimately knowing someone very much like Sherlock. So I read his emotional arc in that vein, and read against this person, a lot of what Sherlock is going through, and his reactions, make sense to me. So, a little background - the person I’m talking about is my husband. He is visibly physically disabled (CP, manifesting in his legs, as well as one almost blind (well, not exactly - he describes what he sees as like looking at a Picasso painting) and unfocused eye, so he has always looked and been  _different_. For many somewhat complicated reasons, his mother was emotionally distant (he calls her the “wire monkey mother” of Harlowe’s Experiment - seriously. I’m personally inclined to be more sympathetic, but she didn’t raise me), and his father was absented through work.  
  
Thus, on the home front, he was receiving spotty indications of affection (mostly through food, which is how he tends to show me affection). He went to a school for disabled kids, but ‘disabled’ in this case encompassed not just congenital physical disability, but mental disability, children with terminal illnesses, children who had been in accidents and permanently disabled (a child, for example, who had been shot in the head and had lost considerable functionality). My husband himself is scary-smart, although it manifests as an intense attention to detail more than anything. He isn’t on the autism spectrum, just… really really focused on detail (in direct contrast with me - I am very much a big picture kind of person).  
  
At any rate, children died all the time at his elementary school, apparently. He has the most depressing childhood stories of anyone I know - both school and summer camp were punctuated by ambulances arriving and children never coming back. You can probably see where I’m going with this - he has profound trust issues, and the thing he trusts least of all are feelings. When he feels - when he  _allows_  himself to feel - they can overwhelm him. With me… well, in some ways we’re made for each other, because I’m emotional enough for both of us. My demonstrativeness can be too much for him sometimes, but in the main I think he appreciates that I can say and show what he still - even today - usually feels like he can’t. He says he “compartmentalizes” his feelings, because otherwise he cannot handle them (one example: one day early in our relationship we were trying to decide something mundane, and I said, “I don’t know, I can never commit.” A throwaway statement as far as I was concerned, but apparently - and I didn’t figure this out until WEEKS later, when it hit me what he’d taken from it - what he heard was that I don’t commit to people so we were doomed as a couple. And he never said it to me - it took me to figure out what he’d intepreted. I was able to figure it out because I tend to constantly take people’s emotional temperature, but… damn. That was really shocking to realize - how much he believes something that isn’t the case, but he’s so intent on steeling himself from hurt that he’ll never let me know). TMI time over.  
  
So, what does this have to do with Sherlock?  
  
I see his character as being very much in this vein. At the point when he jumps, as much as he values John, I don’t think he realizes how much he truly  _likes_  John. I can see Sherlock as having been completely convinced that not telling John was the best thing, for whatever convoluted reason IDEK. I think his affection for John was still largely something he knew he had, but hadn’t really allowed himself (or realized enough) to actually  _feel_ ; I think it was more idea than felt/experienced reality. And by the time he realizes that he misses John, he’s deep undercover and possibly in danger himself. He says in TEH that he’s thought of contacting John many times, and I think that’s a critical thing for him to say. Once he’s out in the cold, so to speak, I think it would be easy to convince himself of almost anything - specifically, that as much as he wants to get in touch with John, John can’t know. John might talk. John’s better off not knowing. It’s just as well.   
  
But his loneliness - something he’s experiencing for the very first time - is beginning to take its toll. John is in his head - John is the voice he carries with him (and maybe that’s another reason he doesn’t contact John - because as far as he’s concerned John is there with him). But he’s lonely - his little speech to Mycroft over the hat says that this is something he’s realized (and it’s made poignant for the conversation taking place in the period when John’s not talking to him). This is the first time, I think, that Sherlock realizes just how much John  _means_  to him, in a general sense. He longs to be reunited - his nonchalant question about John Watson when he’s being cleaned up speaks volumes; John’s all he’s been thinking about, and his excitement at seeing him short-circuits his already stunted ability to recognize that John is not going to take it well when he appears again. He’s just so  _happy_  and relieved to see him again - practically giddy - that it takes him a minute to figure out why John is reacting as he is. And by that time… it’s too late.   
  
Because, think of it. He’s gone into this with such expectations, and they have been cruelly crushed. His fault? Absolutely. But he’s an emotional child; he had fully expected John to be as happy to see him as he is to see John, and instead he’s not only found that John is devastated to know that he was lied to, but that John is with someone else - that John has  _replaced_  him. As that lovely edit from the mind palace sequence in HLV shows - when Mary, in her bridal gown, shoots him and he’s  _screaming_  in pain as he falls away - there are depths to his experience of the reunion and its wake that he keeps buried deep, deep within.  
  
And John cannot be placated. He keeps (understandably, of course) bringing it up, and Sherlock literally doesn’t know what to do or say. He tries “I’m sorry” again, and that doesn’t really seem to do the trick. I think he fully feels sorry - if for no other reason than that he wants John back in his life so desperately - but also I think because there’s a newfound, fledgling empathy for John, born of his own loneliness and an awareness of just how alone he had always been until John, that recognizes that he has, in fact, done John a great disservice.  
  
So, the train. I haven’t changed my mind on that; I read it, from the moment he flips the switch on the bomb, as completely real. I think he seizes it as his one chance to literally get on his knees and  _beg_  forgiveness. True, I am a complete and total sucker for that one expression he has when he says “for all the pain I’ve caused you,” but I really think he means it. And he’s not fishing for what John does tell him - I think he really doesn’t expect that John feels that strongly - but simply desperate for John’s forgiveness. For his part, I think John can  _only_  say what he does, and only truly forgive him, under this kind of duress, because the issue is forced - say it now or never, so he chooses to say it. John - and I love him so much - but John is running away from his vulnerability as fast as his legs can carry him, and he’ll never broach the subject of true forgiveness on his own.  
  
So, the ‘joke’. THIS is where I see my husband, because he simply cannot lay himself open and vulnerable without deflecting it with “humor.” It is unbelievably frustrating for someone like me, who kind of thrives on emotional connection, but he cannot do it; he doesn’t trust spoken expressions of love (literally - he hears falseness in ‘I love you’ [I say it anyway], and he does not say it but on very, very rare occasion). The more uncomfortable the feelings - these would be intense emotions like anger, remorse, guilt, mourning - the more likely he is to seek refuge behind a joke (he was a laugh riot when my father was dying, let me tell you, but it all came down to how affected he was, and how little emotional vocabulary he had to express it. He loved my father - they had a good relationship). And I think this is where Sherlock is as well; he  _cannot_  express those feelings without giving himself - and John, poor, terribly repressed and so uncomfortable with his not-entirely-masculine masculinity - plausible deniability. An out - a way to say those things without having to look them square in the face and fully acknowledge them. It’s completely dysfunctional, but it works for them.

So, by the end of TEH, I think he’s just so freaking happy to have John in his life again that he will do  _anything_  to keep him there - make any concession to John that he must in order to hold onto some part of him. That broad smile he gives him as he comes out of his bedroom at the end - when have we ever seen that smile? And it’s all for John - it’s a private moment - and John is looking at him back with such unabashed affection and happiness that… it’s a beautiful moment, and one he’ll do anything to keep.  
  
So, TSoT. We know that Sherlock is desperately afraid of what John’s wedding will mean for them. I think, having wronged John before, and possibly still not quite understanding what exactly went wrong there, he’s determined to ensure that  _nothing_  will get in the way of their friendship from here on out. He knows that John regards him in high esteem, and I think that until John asks him to be his best man, that’s how Sherlock defines their relationship as well. Tidy. Mutual admiration society. Controllable. We have high regard for one another - it’s all good. He’s going to Mary - it’s all good. This is all I want (or deserve, a voice might whisper in the back of his head; he does seem to have some emotional esteem issues, even as he knows his worth intellectually).   
  
And then John throws a spanner in the works by telling Sherlock he’s his best friend, and  _that_  opens up a whole new can of worms, I think - it marks the beginning of a slow and messy descent into ‘sentiment’ that will bottom out at the reception. Because if John cares for him as a  _friend_  - something Sherlock, by his own admission, has never had before, then Sherlock - he doesn’t love by halves. Romantic or not, I think his heart belongs to John from that very moment, precisely because he hadn’t asked for it, he hadn’t expected it, he hadn’t even known he  _could_  be John’s best friend, and for people who have been lonely and known it, and perhaps yearned for something they couldn’t even quite name (I’m speaking personally here), that one overture can set off a chain reaction that ends in total devotion. John has given him more than he thinks he deserves, and that knowledge unravels something in Sherlock’s heart that may not be ready to come open, but life is messy that way.  
  
Fortunately for Sherlock - and I think this is why I will always have something of a soft spot for Mary regardless of how she turns out, regardless of what she’s done to Sherlock - Mary sees and accepts this in Sherlock. People are messy, and these three are in many ways a complete disaster, but she gives Sherlock space in John’s life; she knows, she sees, and she never tells him no, and so Sherlock’s feelings are given room to grow. Which they do, beautifully. From then on, as that one Metro reviewer wrote, Sherlock is orbiting around John,  _seeing_  him in ways he never has before. Appreciating him. Wanting to know and know and know everything about him - gazing in quiet awe as John saves the young soldier. Researching Sholto when it turns out there’s something about John he doesn’t know - the kind of thing about John that he’s been completely uninterested in up until now. In the past, John was his faithful sidekick with barely a life to call his own; now he’s this person that Sherlock doesn’t know enough, and he  _has_  to know him inside and out. JOHN becomes Sherlock’s great case - the thing he determines to figure out.  
  
The wedding… is a mess of Sherlock slowly falling apart. There are two breakdowns in this series, IMO, and the first is the chaotic best man’s speech, in which he’s working to reconcile reason with sentiment (the second, of course, would be the mind palace sequence in HLV). He ends on the side of sentiment… only to, once again, be painfully made aware that he  is alone. Here, he’s the most receptive to love he’ll ever be, and John dances away with Mary (who [seems to] mouth “for you” as they go, giving Sherlock that dance that he cannot have - and Jesus that breaks my heart), and even Janine is otherwise engaged.   
  
So, for the second time in series three, he dons his Sherlock coat and goes out into the cold world to “be” Sherlock Holmes. He won’t let himself be hurt like that again. I don’t know that he regrets it, because I think he’ll never regret John, but he is wounded to his core; he’s let himself be vulnerable and look what it’s got him, and so he “compartmentalizes” it - packs it away deep inside and tries to regain that composure and detachment that’s always served him in the past.  
  
In that sense, it helps that he hasn’t seen John in over a month when they finally reunite. He’s clearly slipped - it’s for a case, sure, but he’s also self-medicating. If those feelings are too much to handle, then he simply won’t - he’ll just drift away for awhile where he doesn’t have to deal with them.  
  
In the meantime, Janine. Rightly or wrongly, I think he feels justified in what he does - how he uses her - and this is a real echo of the Sherlock of the past. But it also reinforces the sense that he’s put away his emotions - he has well and truly boxed them up in the wake of the wedding, and so he seems to have actually lost emotional ground in that sense. If emotions hurt, he will either drug them or deny them, but they are NOT coming out again to make him vulnerable - he doesn’t like feeling vulnerable like that, at all, and he’ll do and be anything to avoid it. So I see Janine as both expedient, case-wise, and a demonstration to himself that he doesn’t feel (I think it’s telling that, when Magnussen says at the end that Janine makes the funniest noises, we see Sherlock look up and over at him. He’s out of focus and far away, but there’s an intimation that he actually DOES care what Magnussen did to her - he’s not as unfeeling as he’d like to think he is).   
  
In the meantime, John is… imploding. He mostly seems relieved to be back on the case with Sherlock - he  _needs_  to be, and for a brief time they are who they were, no pesky emotions getting in the way, John believing Sherlock devoid of human feelings, Sherlock more than happy to indulge that belief.  
  
And then Mary happens. And I think it’s an index of just how vulnerable Sherlock is still that he’s so utterly shocked that it’s MARY who’s looking at him from the other side of a gun. He has put everything carefully away, only to find that the box is made of vapor, and everything he’s carefully put away all comes pouring out. He literally (kind of) has a bleeding heart from the moment she shoots him - the physical representation of what she’s done to him emotionally (as that one scene with the bridal gown shooting says so eloquently).   
  
And here’s where it’s hard to talk about his motivations. Mary has a character arc that, for whatever unknown reason, requires her to remain in the picture, and only Sherlock’s support of her character keeps her there. Does he truly believe that she tried to save him? I honestly don’t know. I think here’s where you’d have to play two possible scenarios - one in which he doesn’t trust her, and one in which he does. I’m inclined to think he actually does, because… TPTB just aren’t that complex sometimes. So I’ll go with, yes, he trusts her.

If that were the case, and if Sherlock truly felt that John gravitated to her because he is an adrenaline junkie attracted to dangerous people (he suggests as much when he’s getting tested for drugs), then I can see him doing what he does, which is essentially to give Mary the chance to make her case and promise - as he vowed at the wedding - to do anything for her - but only because doing anything for  _her_  is doing anything for  _John_. Make no mistake - this is all about John, and giving John the thing that will make him happy. If he trusts Mary, then I can see him believing that Mary, as a someone who has come in from the cold and wants to be with John in that ordinary life that John’s forever going on about, is the better choice. Sherlock will never be that ‘normal’ person or that ‘normal’ life - he will always be who he is, and he has no intention of changing, not even for John. He’s fundamentally  _different -_ one of the themes of the series - and he’s okay with that.  
  
John, he knows, is nothing if NOT okay with being different. Mary - if she’s to be trusted, and particularly because she’s pregnant (sigh) - is John’s best chance for the kind of life he’s always said he wanted, yet edgy enough that she’ll probably always keep John’s adrenaline needs satisfied, particularly if John knows what she was. This is a stretch, I admit, but I think it’s the best explanation based on the crap they gave us to work with. Personally, I can’t quite see Sherlock trusting Mary, but in that case I’d assume that he and John and Mycroft have a plan or something and it gets complicated and I’m not going there. So this is the ‘everything is on the up and up’ reading of the situation.  
  
And in the end, he kills for John. And I know in my heart that they did this entirely to bookend it with John’s shooting of the cabbie earlier on. Whatever it says about me, I don’t have a specific problem with him having killed; Sherlock falls from grace here, yes, and there are precious few consequences (and  _that’s_  my main problem with the whole thing), but the gesture itself… it’s the final nail in the coffin of any belief John might have had in Sherlock as an ordinary man. Where ignorance of Mary’s name and her past keep John safely in love with her, Sherlock gives John the exact opposite - lays himself open, gives him his full name, lets John witness his fall, makes it a Grand Gesture so that it can never be perceived as the act of a man who simply loves John and would do anything for him. It’s not heroic, but it  _is_  grandiose - it keeps Sherlock in that kind of superhuman place that John is wont to put him, and if he’s there, there’s distance between them, and that’s a distance that - as much as they needed the ruse in the train to speak their feelings, and as much as they needed to be drunk in order to express any kind of softer affection for one another - they  _need_  if they’re going to be able to go forward even just as memories to one another.   
  
Which is to say, I think Sherlock isn’t just killing Magnussen for John (and Mary, and maybe even Mycroft), Sherlock is offering John a way to think of and remember him that doesn’t involve regret. Sherlock will remain a great - not good - man, and John will be able to file him away in his memory as this exceptional person in an otherwise unexceptional life. I think that’s the reason for the distance between them at the airport. John is already well entrenched behind a wall that separates him emotionally from Sherlock, and Sherlock - though he can barely keep it together - is not going to violate that. All they  _can_  do is shake hands, because to do anything more - to reveal anything more - would be to tear down walls that are tenuous at best. So it is that we only see Sherlock even remotely red-eyed on the plane, and then only after he’s heard that Mycroft is calling. He can keep it together until there’s a chance to go back - look at the hope on his face when Mycroft asks him if he’s learnt his lesson - just a split second, and then - so very true to form - he shuts it down with a bit of snark, and the stage is set for the fourth act.  
  
This is what I see as Sherlock’s emotional trajectory. I know that not everyone feels this way, but this is what I saw and what I’ve taken away from the series to go forward.

I’ve actually already parsed out John a bit [here](http://acafanmom.tumblr.com/post/73206168205/i-hope-youre-going-somewhere-with-this-or-why-im); for my part, I think that John is fueled throughout this season by nothing so much as a desperate need to keep Sherlock at arm’s length, because Sherlock hurt him  _that much_. He isn’t over the fall, not by a long shot, and though he may have forgiven Sherlock - I think he has, and I don’t think they’re going to bring up the betrayal again in a forgiveness-seeking/giving context - he absolutely hasn’t  _forgotten_  what he did, and he absolutely will not allow it to happen again. Throughout the season, he keeps naming Sherlock - identifying him in ways that help him to also compartmentalize him as an object, rather than a person: best and wisest man (really? REALLY, JOHN??). Best friend (safe). Mate (even safer). Junkie. John names people - puts them into categories by which they can be understood (and controlled), and I think here is a hint of why he keeps going on about not being “gay.” That’s a category he doesn’t own. It has nothing to do with his feelings - which he barely acknowledges in any case - and everything to do with a desperate need to regulate the world - to give it order so he can navigate it without falling.

So Mary is the woman he loves, the woman who’s been lying to him, the woman carrying his baby. Sherlock is “Sherlock Holmes,” the Great Man. Indeed, by HLV, Sherlock cannot be humanized anymore, as far as John is concerned; everything that Sherlock does in HLV reinforces his superhumanness, removes him from the world of mundane sentiment, and keeps John safe from Sherlock’s ability to hurt him. Sherlock defies human emotion and gets engaged for a case; Sherlock defies death itself (if only John knew why and how); Sherlock becomes god-like Vengeance, with lights and wind and booming voice so unlike his usual manner of speaking.   
  
Because if Sherlock is just a man, he can still hurt John. And if Sherlock is just a man - and still a  _man_  - then John has to name what it is he feels, and he isn’t ready to do that. You have awe for a god, but you have love for a man, if you let yourself, and John can’t (yet), for so many reasons.  
  
As to why Sherlock is such an ass to Mrs. Hudson and his mother, I think a) generationally, they let him (in other words, he’s a brat), but also b) he feels safe with them. He doesn’t really respect them in the way I feel like he respects his father - the relationship with his mother and Mrs. Hudson is far more antagonistic, but they love him, he knows it, and I think this gives him an outlet for the expression of frustration that he otherwise doesn’t have. Or… well, this is what I do with my husband. In my family, we expressed those kinds of negative things at our own peril - usually the silent treatment from my mother, which is why I’m forever taking the emotional temperature of people around me, and always assuming that if there’s a problem, it’s my fault. But I digress. I think Sherlock feels safest venting at them, and to the extent that they keep coming back, I think there’s at least a part of them both that understands that. It doesn’t excuse his behavior, but to me it helps to make sense of it.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Probably.


End file.
